David Ellison and Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss (Status Illustration/Leigh Vogel/Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
When David Ellison took his victory lap through New York and Los Angeles after closing the Paramount-Skydance deal last month, he stuck to a single line whenever reporters pressed him about Donald Trump’s boast of a backroom deal to run public service announcements on CBS: He didn’t want to “politicize the company.” Again and again, Ellison insisted Paramount would remain above the partisan fray, repeating the talking point until it was clear he had no intention of deviating from the script.
Which is what makes one of his first big moves as Paramount’s new overlord so revealing and hypocritical. On Wednesday, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that Ellison is on the verge of acquiring Bari Weiss’ The Free Press for “well above” $100 million—an astonishing and absurd sum for a Substack-housed opinion site that is only said to generate $10–15 million in annual subscription revenue, with its overhead unknown. Weiss, the stridently pro-Israel, proudly anti-“woke” culture warrior, has built her brand on polarizing political commentary—supposedly the type of material Ellison signaled to reporters that he wishes to run away from.
And yet, as we first reported months ago, Ellison has been intent on recruiting her to CBS News in a senior role. Indeed, I'm told that the deal is…
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